Saints finish with a defeat
Siena will be No. 3 seed, play Thursday in MAAC quarterfinal
First, the Siena men’s basketball team looked as though it would stagger into the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament with the hangover of a second straight blowout loss in western New York.
Then, it appeared the Saints would have an encouraging comeback victory to carry them into Atlantic City, N.J.
It turned out to be neither. After falling behind by 16 points in the first half, and taking a seven-point lead late, Siena lost 67-64 to Canisius on Saturday before 1,119 at Koessler Athletic Center.
Siena senior forward Jackson Stormo, who scored a game-high 18 points on 8-for-11 shooting with 11 rebounds, said he would accentuate the positive heading into the postseason.
“You always take the good over the bad,” Stormo said. “That’s the way to move on, make sure that you’re heading in the right direction for the season. I mean, there’s stuff that we’ll look at and there’s definitely some bad things ... There’s things that we can take moving forward into the conference tournament, but no, we’re
not getting down on ourselves about it.”
Siena (15-13 overall, 12-8 MAAC) will be the No. 3 seed in the tournament and play in a quarterfinal at 7 p.m. Thursday at Boardwalk
Hall. They’ll face the winner of a 9 p.m. Tuesday first-round game between No. 6 Marist and No. 11 Quinnipiac.
“I’m fine (with either matchup),” Siena coach Carmen Maciariello said. “At the end of the day, you can’t worry about that, because you’ve got to take whoever it is.”
The Saints will have to win three games in three days to capture the title. They would have liked the No. 2 seed and a day off between games, but they knew that wasn’t going to happen before they took the court. Saint Peter’s beat Fairfield to lock up the No. 2 seed in an earlier game.
“I mean, I still feel confident in our group,” said junior guard Colby Rogers, who had 17 points, including five 3-pointers. “I think we know what’s ahead of us and we’ve just got to attack it head on. We’ve just got to win these games and focus on the next game, learn what we can from this game and just keep moving in the right direction.”
They’ll have to clean up their act. The Saints committed 20 turnovers against Canisius, two nights after they had 16 turnovers in a 74-52 loss at Niagara. Canisius held a 22-9 advantage in points off turnovers.
“I just think a little more ball security,” Maciariello said. “I thought the start of the game, if you take out the first four or five minutes, where we had five “I have no idea,” Maciariello said. “I’ll leave that up to our medical team and keep you guys posted on that. I hope he’s OK.”
Siena built a 60-53 lead with 7:30 to play, but scored only two points in the final 4:38. Canisius guard Ahamadou Fofana put his team ahead for good at 65-62 with a 3-pointer with 1:20 left. That came right after the officials went to the monitor twice in 10 seconds to determine possession turnovers, that could be the difference. Now you’re not down 16.
You have a chance to build a lead and make it more of a boxing match, punch for punch, as opposed to have to whittle it down and come back.”
The 20th and final turnover could be costly. Siena graduate guard Anthony Gaines lost the ball while bringing it up as time expired. He stayed down at midcourt for a couple of minutes while holding his right knee. He got up and limped off the court under his own power. and both times awarded it to Canisius.
Stormo missed a jump hook for the lead and Canisius got the rebound with 9.7 seconds left. Canisius’ Armon Harried made both ends of a 1-and-1 for the final margin. Gaines missed his front end of a 1-and-1 with 6.4 seconds to play.